The subject matter disclosed herein relates to polymers with antibacterial properties. Antibiotic resistant bacteria, such as Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VRE), Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and Fluoroquinolone-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa pose a serious clinical threat to people around the globe. The presence of these multidrug resistant bacteria (superbugs) in hospitals is responsible for around 5% of the total hospital admissions in United States, and more than 20,000 people die in United States alone from superbugs' infections. Thus, antibiotic drug resistant bacteria takes a huge toll on human lives and put enormous financial burden on the health care system. Hence there is an urgent need to develop novel antibacterial agents that can act against the superbug infections, and toward which the development of bacterial resistance is highly thwarted. Despite this urgent need, there has been a steady decline in the development of new antibacterial agents. The significant cost of antibiotic drug development and rapid expansion of bacterial resistance towards antibiotics are considered major reasons behind the diminished efforts in new antibiotic development. In comparison with the target specific mode of action of conventional antibiotics, natural host defense antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) act to rupture the bacterial cell surface through non-specific lipophilic and electrostatic interactions. AMPs, present in various plants and animal species, share the common characteristics of amphiphilic structure, which is the presence of cationic and hydrophobic segments throughout the peptide backbone. AMPs have small size (around 20 amino acid residues) and are known to display broad spectrum antibacterial activity. Cationic AMPs preferentially bind to the anionic bacterial cell surface through electrostatic interactions followed by permeabilization into the hydrophobic core of lipid bilayer through hydrophobic interactions, leading to the pore formation in cell membrane, membrane depolarization, and through various other modes of action result in the bacterial cell death. Microbes are highly unlikely to acquire the resistance towards AMPs, as the microbes would need to change the entire cell membrane structure and composition. The large scale application of AMPs is challenging due to the costly and time consuming synthesis or isolation of AMPs. Furthermore, the oral administration of AMPs would be difficult due to proteolysis. On the other hand, synthetic amphiphilic polymers mimicking the design characteristics of AMPs can be produced on large scale, cost effectively, due to their simple design and structural versatility. The past few years have seen an increased research interest in the area of synthetic amphiphilic polymers including polymers based on polynorbornenes, polymethacrylates, poly(vinyl pyridine)s, and polystyrenes, among others. However, the high toxicity of synthetic amphiphilic polymers toward mammalian cells has been a challenge toward their therapeutic applications, and synthetic amphiphilic polymers with highly selective (bacteria over mammalian cells) are highly desired to combat the threat of superbug infections. The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.